No one speaks anything further and the whole room falls silent.

Zoe who just finished telling Lily that I am her rapist is also looking at Lily’s shocked expressions in a surprise.

Both me and Lily are just staring at each other as if someone has frozen our eyesight in place.

I cannot exactly tell what expressions my face is showing right now, but inside my mind, there is a hurricane of thoughts storming all over.

Why is Lily here? And now?

A-And the way Zoe spoke to her was made it seem like they had spoken before…

Don’t tell me… Lily is a part of…

No, that’s impossible. I have known and loved this girl since we were 11 and if even if that were the case somehow, why would they have asked me to forcibly rape her before?

It makes no sense to all if she was already a part of their gang! I think I can at least rule out that possibility.

Suddenly, another thought enters my mind…

Wait, they don’t want me to do it forcibly with Lily again, do they?

But if that was the case, why they let her be free to talk and look around their base this time? Shouldn’t they have just tied her up like before?

Side thoughts like these simultaneously rise in my brain, but the one which is dominating my whole mind is not these questions, but what Zoe just said.

This Zoe told her… She told Lily that I raped her…

“Caiden… You…” Lily mutters in a low voice.

Her face is completely expressionless… Like an absolute death-mask.

I don’t even know what to speak to her anymore.

And what can I even tell her? That I was forced to rape her?

Even though it’s true, will she even believe me now? After someone else has told her about this before me?

No, I don’t think she would…

Fuck! I should have told Lily when I had the chance, damn it!

I should have just…

Aargh! No point regretting over things I did in the past or should have done in the past anymore. I need to think what I have to do now…

I need to find a way to convince Lily that even though I was at fault in some way as well, but I did all those things to save her and my life at that time…

In my opinion, there is only way out of this situation right now. That is telling her the truth about what my conditions were at that time as fast as possible.

I know, I said that she probably won’t believe that… But still, she might give me time to prove my innocence…

And if I could get one of these gang women to confess that they forced me, I could use it as proof.

And I think I can probably make Emily agree to cooperate somehow…

Gathering up all my courage, I move close to Lily and speak up again-

“Lily, I… That is… I was forced—”

“You raped me?” Lily cut in-between with a low but crystal-clear voice.

But there is still not even the slightest fluctuation in her expressions.

“I… I did, but I was—”

“And you told me that you love me… just two days later?”

“I do! I did not lie! I really do love you, Lily! But I was—”

“And you even… When I was vulnerable… When I needed your support…”

“Please, Lily! I didn’t—”

“I asked you, whom I loved, to overwrite my scariest and the worst memories… But you turned out to be the one who gave them to me…”

“Lily, just listen to me!” I say while moving my hands towards her shoulder.

“I didn’t want to—”

“DON’T TOUCH ME! YOU MONSTER!” Lily yells on top of her lungs while swatting away my hand forcefully.

Finally, her expressionless face breaks as tears start leaking down from her eyes to stream down her smooth white cheeks.

“I don’t want to ever see your face again,” she says while giving me a look filled with extreme hatred.

Suddenly, I feel strength leaving my legs…

“Lily, please, it wasn’t my fault at all! I love—”

Before I could even finish speaking, Lily puts both her hands on her face to cover it and runs out of the room while sobbing loudly…

“No! Wait! Lily!” I yell after her.

“She is your…girlfriend?” Zoe asks me in a surprised tone.

I slowly turn back to look…

Now that Lily is gone, my eyes focused on the other women standing here and I know almost all of them…

Abigale and Clara, who are the other squad leaders have an amused look on their faces. Natalie is also here and she is looking extremely angry for some reason.

Emily, who is standing beside Natalie is also not showing many reactions to this situation but well, at least she is not behaving weirdly as one would expect of her.

But my focus is not on them, but entirely on Zoe right now.

“Is she?” She asks again with a surprised tone.

“Shut up, bitch!” I yell at her.

Without waiting to see her reaction to my rudeness, I run towards the door from which Lily left earlier and exits it to enter into the corridor outside.

I look around frantically but there is no sigh on Lily here right now…

Lily… Where did you go?

I don’t know much about this place but I don’t think it’s that huge.

I need to find Lily fast… But where to start looking?

I doubt that she got to the end of the corridor and somewhere else as I should have at least seen her leaving.

That means only one thing… That she is inside one of these rooms here.

Without wasting a single second, I start opening every single door in this corridor randomly and looking inside to find any sighs of Lily there.

I try to catch the sound of sobbing as Lily was doing that just before she left the room but there are none.

A few of the rooms I try to look are locked but most of them are open with personal belongings of the person living there scattered inside…

“Damnit! Where did she go?” I say frustratingly while quickly taking a glance inside another empty room.

“Aaargh!”

The moment I start to close the door, something grabs my hand strongly and pulls me inside the room.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I find the face of the girl I was looking for so desperately right in front of my eyes.

Lily…

She is not crying right now unlike just a few minutes before but instead, her face is showing a great worry as she looks at me searchingly.

W-Why is Lily not crying?

“Caiden, those women didn’t follow you, did they?” Lily asks urgently.